People in San Diego may have heard about a tragic accident that occurred last month, and the brave soldier who risked and ultimately lost his life while trying to help a woman in distress after a car accident.
The accident occurred early in the morning on a stretch of Interstate 8 in Mission Valley. A woman in a Honda Civic apparently lost control of her car and nearly slammed into a barricade on the side of the highway before coming to a complete stop in the middle of the highway. Quite predictably, her stalled vehicle caused oncoming traffic to collide into the back of her car, creating a chain-reaction car accident, which included a truck being driven by two U.S. Marines.
After the collision, the two Marines leapt from their truck to assist the woman in the Honda, but as they made their way towards her vehicle among the high velocity-traffic on the busy highway, tragedy struck. One of the Marines was able to narrowly dodge an oncoming vehicle by jumping off of the overpass, falling some 20 feet before hitting the ground. Miraculously, the man’s injuries were relatively minor. The other Marine was not so lucky. He was either hit by a car and thrown off of the overpass, or voluntarily jumped to avoid a collision, but in either event was killed by the hard fall to the unforgiving ground below.
When a negligent driver causes an accident, they are potentially liable for all of the damage they cause in the collision, but also the foreseeable events that transpire because of the accident. In this case, the woman who stopped her car on the highway could be held liable to everyone injured in the car accident, as well as to the two men who tried to come to her aid.
Source: NBC 7 San Diego “Marine Killed in Chain Reaction Crash Identified,” Diane Guevara, Monica Garske, Andie Adams
